Honor Pad V9 review: The iPad challenger

How time flies. Just over a year since we reviewed the Honor Pad 9, the company has returned with a follow-up that fixes many of the issues we had with that affordable tablet.

Shifting focus to mid-range has worked wonders here, and the Honor Pad V9 is a worthy successor in just about every way to the lower-priced Honor Pad 9.

It has improved performance, a sharper display, and the whole thing just hummed along with anything we threw at it. While we do acknowledge there are fewer Android tablet apps than there are on the iPadOS side of the fence, this sub-£400 model feels like a genuine challenger to Apple’s dominance.

Design & Build

• Comfortable to hold for long periods
• Durable
• Magic Pencil sold separately, but available in bundle deals

At quick glance, you might be shocked to find out that the Honor Pad V9 isn’t made by the Cupertino giant. The 11.5 inch display has a narrow, curved bezel, and even the speaker grilles look plenty familiar to anyone that’s spent time with an iPad. 

In the box, it’s just the tablet, with Honor’s Magic Pencil sold separately (although bundles are available), and build quality is impressive throughout – there’s no way the tablet itself is bending if you slip it in a bag.

There’s a volume rocker on the top-right edge, and a sleep/wake button on top, while the base has a USB-C port for charging and data. If you do have the Magic Pencil, it attaches magnetically on the right-hand side.

Lloyd Coombes

On the back, the Honor Pad V9 proudly proclaims it’s “IMAX Enhanced”, which we’ll come to shortly, and there are two camera modules. One is the AI camera, while the other is a more traditional snapper, but the latter’s more bulbous shape means it’s not quite as easy to type on the tablet while it’s laid flat.

There’s no headphone jack, either, but coming from an M2 iPad Pro, I was pleased with how comfortable the Honor Pad V9 is to hold with one hand for a long period of time.

Screen & Speakers

• 11.5-inch LCD panel
• 144Hz refresh rate
• 2800×1840 resolution

One of our favourite things about this tablet is that its display is big and bright, and almost belies the fact that it’s an LCD panel. While OLED would undoubtedly have driven up the pricing, the 11.5-inch screen here is fantastic.

While Android loves its primary colours, it’s been a while since we’ve seen the likes of Google Docs look quite this vibrant, and it’s all as smooth as you could ask with a 144Hz refresh rate and 500 nits of brightness, which matches its rivals.

The 2800×1840 resolution is marginally less than the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus, but you wouldn’t know it, and it’s nice and bright for just about anything, even in sunlight.

Lloyd Coombes

In fact, the display has an industry-first layer on top of it, which minimises smudges without affecting its responsiveness.

As for what the ‘IMAX Enhanced’ is all about, it’s hard to say, but it’s certainly colour accurate and feels great to watch movies on.

Another aspect of that is its eight-speaker array, which makes it a fantastic media consumption device, whether that’s movies, TV, or music. In fact, getting so much bass out of this tiny chassis feels a little like witchcraft.

Specs & Performance

• Mediatek Dimensity 8350 Elite
• 8GB or 12GB of RAM, depending on region
• 256GB of internal storage

While the Honor Tab V9 isn’t what you’d call a “flagship” in terms of performance, it certainly punches above expectations created by its modest price tag.

Playing Genshin Impact was great with the bright display, and at no point did it feel as though it was struggling, and the same could be said of games like PUBG Mobile.

Lloyd Coombes

It’s not the same quality of visuals you’d get on the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus, for example, but it does plenty with whatever you throw at it.

Storage-wise, there’s bad news for European customers. While some countries are getting 12GB of RAM to partner with the chipset, in Europe, you can only get a 256GB version with 8GB of RAM.

That’s disappointing, because there’s no expandable storage, and is one of only two gripes we have with this fantastic tablet.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro benchmarks

Cameras

• 8MP front camera
• 13MP rear camera

Our other gripe? The cameras. It’s not that they’re bad, but they’re essentially identical to those found on the original Honor Pad 9 last year.

Images suffer greatly when light is anything less than optimal, and detail and colour gets washed out pretty quickly. If you’re looking for a tablet to take photos, this isn’t likely to be the one for you (although we’re sure you’ll agree that’s a relatively small niche).

The front-facing camera, despite being just an 8MP sensor, actually fares better if you’ve got plenty of light. If not, you’ll see diminishing returns pretty quickly.

Battery & Charging

• 10,100 mAh battery
• Long charge times
• 45W max charging

The sizeable cell in the Honor Pad V9 will keep you running for, well, ages. In our testing with PC Mark’s Work 3.0 benchmark, we hit 13 and a half hours.

Thankfully, you can juice it up much more quickly this time around, rather than the slow charge of the Honor Pad 9. The V9 can be fully charged in under an hour, making it ideal for anyone on the go, and there’s a charger in the box too (which isn’t always a given).

Lloyd Coombes

Software & Features

• Android 15
• MagicOS 9.0 overlay
• No confirmation on OS upgrades yet

The Honor Pad V9 packs the latest version of Android with Android 15, which is just as well because Honor is yet to comment (at least in our research) on how long users can expect to see fresh updates for Google’s platform.

For our money, MagicOS 9.0 is one of the best-looking and clearest Android overlays around, so we’re glad to have it here on such an impressive display. It’s big focus, as you might expect, is AI productivity tools.

Lloyd Coombes

Rather than just slapping those two letters on the box, however, Honor has given more quantifiable uses for the technology. It can speed up note-taking with AI transcription, organise your documents, and updates to its Honor Docs app mean it can solve equations on the fly, even when handwritten.

Honor Free Space allows floating window support for multiple apps, too, like watching a recording back, taking notes, and organising documents.

Our only minor issue, then, is that there’s just not the same level of tablet apps on the Play Store as you might find on Apple’s own App Store. Our PCMark 3.0 battery test, for example, doesn’t have a native tablet version, so runs in a “floating window”.

You’d hardly notice the difference, but it’s worth checking the apps you’re buying an Honor Pad V9 for are all compatible.

Price and Availability

As we mentioned earlier, the Honor Pad V9 is available for £9.99, but EU customers only get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. At the time of writing, you can buy a bundle from Amazon for £399.99, comprising the tablet, Magic Pencil and flip cover. But the better deal is to buy direct from the Honor website, where the same bundle is available for just £299.99.

Looking further afield, you can find 12GB RAM and 512GB of storage in other regions, so depending on your region it might be worth looking at an imported model.

If this isn’t the right tablet for you, see our top recommendations in our round-up of the best tablets we’ve tested. We’ve also got recommendations for the best budget tablets.

Should you buy the Honor Pad V9?

Aside from two small flies in the ointment, those being the lack of expandable storage and some middling cameras, the Honor Pad V9 is one of the best mid-range tablets you can buy right now. It’s a fantastic device that can handle just about anything you can throw at it.

Specs

• Processor: Mediatek Dimensity 8350 Elite
• Security: Passcode, Facial Recognition
• Internal storage: 256GB
• Expandable storage: No
• Sensors: None
• Memory (RAM): 8GB
• Battery: 10,100mAh
• Display: 11.5-inch LCD
• Resolution: 2800×1840
• Rear camera: 13MP
• Front camera: 8MP
• Dimensions: 259.1mm x 176.1mm x 6.1mm
• Weight: 475g
• Ports: USB-C port
• Bluetooth